West Virginia’s Sydney Woodley dribbles during an NCAA women’s basketball game against Texas A&M on Friday, Nov. 15, 2024, at the WVU Coliseum in Morgantown.
West Virginia’s Sydney Woodley dribbles during an NCAA women’s basketball game against Texas A&M on Friday, Nov. 15, 2024, at the WVU Coliseum in Morgantown.
MORGANTOWN — Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of running a college athletic program is scheduling.
Finding proper opponents is tough enough, figuring out where the dates fit best, including the fact that the league schedule is presented by the conference itself, figuring in the influence of television, which in the end has the money and the final say, toss in travel and holidays and ... well, you get the idea.
It becomes even more complicated for WVU, being among the easternmost outposts of the Big 12, which has stretched itself into being a national conference and even is talking about adding in an international mix involving Mexico.
If you want to know how influential the schedule is, look no further than football. Much of the air went out of the Mountaineers’ season when they opened on Aug. 31 at home against Penn State, then played archrival Pitt on the road in the Backyard Brawl. Both games proved to be losses and set in motion a strong backlash among fans.
Had WVU opened with Albany, a lower-division school rather than a nationally ranked school, might things have been different? You can’t say, which means you can’t say no to it, either.
And would WVU’s season, which has picked up steam late, not have looked better closing with the Backyard Brawl against a now-struggling Pitt team that went halfway through the season undefeated, rather than having to travel all the way to Lubbock, Texas, to face Texas Tech to close out the season?
These are not second-guesses. It’s life in the modern era of college athletics and it runs through all WVU sports. The football Mountaineers had their rough start. The baseball club has a new coach in Steve Sabins, who will open the Big 12 season with a road series at Oklahoma State and then at home against Arizona, two schools with strong traditions and national championship trophies in their case.
The women’s basketball Mountaineers, up to No. 12 nationally, play this week in the Gulf Coast Showcase in Florida, starting on Friday, when it is expected they will get their first big-time test of the season, facing undefeated and fifth-ranked Texas in the final. A win there, and they could jump into the top 10, and they eagerly await it.
“I don’t want to look too far ahead,†WVU coach Mark Kellogg said after a 70-point victory over Lafayette. “Obviously, last year we played [Texas] here and they kind of controlled that game; got up early and stayed in double digits the rest of the way. We never threatened them the way we would have liked to.
“We look forward to the opportunity to be part of a game with two teams ranked in the top 15 playing each other; it’s great for women’s basketball. But we have the High Point team we have to play; they have either Boise or Illinois, both of which are great and have Power Five wins already this season.
“There is no Texas yet.â€
On the men’s basketball side, though, WVU’s completely rebuilt Mountaineers take their 3-1 team to the Bahamas to take part in the Battle 4 Atlantis Classic, which began on Wednesday and runs through Friday with three games.
There’s no settling into this one for the Mountaineers, who drew Gonzaga, ranked No. 3 in the country at 5-0 going into the game and considered a prime Final Four possibility.
What’s more, WVU could end up playing Indiana and Louisville in the Thanksgiving Day and Friday games.
“It’s an opportunity,†is the way first-year Mountaineer coach Darian DeVries puts it.
If WVU is looking to see just how good this team is, it will find out quickly.
“It’s a great game for us, a great challenge for us,†DeVries said of Gonzaga in a game that ended too late for this edition. “We understand between now and when we toss it up in the Bahamas, we’ve got to get better at some things. We’re not going to be a complete fix by Wednesday, but we’ve got to continue to grow as a team in certain areas. Our guys are pretty motivated to do that.â€
